I've spending quite a bit of time recently thinking about femininity and masculinity. When I first came out to my family, I found a huge problem in trying to explain being trans in context of what it means to be female. As time went by I learned that ultimately femininity and masculinity can be seen as meaningless in figuring out whether or not you are trans. However, now I'm starting to realize that this is not completely true as our perceptions concerning femininity and masculinity are dependent on our minds and they can often serve as a way to tell us that we should have been born as a person of the opposite sex. What I'm talking about here is personal perceptions of femininity and masculinity, for example when a person states that a certain gender stereotype is false they indicate that in their eyes, their perception of their gender does not include that stereotype. I believe that misogynistic and its counterpart are products of a persons perception of gender. Someone misogynistic might perceive the female gender as being weak or manipulative or as overly aggressive. To prove this right, they will often be highly aware of manifestations of those traits which will strengthen their prejudicial view of women. These views will often be used to demonize the other gender. I suspect that our concepts of gender are initially formed by observing the behavior of our parents. With each parent representing the idealistic manifestation of gender. Violent or manipulative parents will naturally create fairly negative views of that parents gender and if the parent is of the same sex as the child it will have a devastating effect on the child's self esteem later on in life. Our views of gender change throughout our lives as we meet more people and form our own independent perception of the genders. While there are specific gender stereotypes that are common in society, most people have much more unique views of what the ideal manifestation of gender is. Ideal gender means all the traits that a person associates with the perfect representation of a gender. Ideal gender does not indicate a positive view of that person and a misogynistic ideal female would be most likely an extremely negative person. Most people have mostly positive views of both genders and will often search for a partner who is as close to their concept of ideal gender as possible. If they have a positive image of gender they will also often strive to become their ideal. There are exceptions to this rule, especially among same sex partners. However, I suspect that once a person falls in love, their perception changes and their ideal representation of gender turns into their partner's most dominant positive qualities which strengthens the bond and increases the desirability of the partner. In the case of people who are trans, ideal gender can be problematic. Lets assume that our mind knows that we should have been born in a body of the opposite sex, however the thought is in some way repressed as you grow older. Our mind is incompatible with our inner gender and this will lead to the mind attacking the body and us feeling gender dysphoria. I believe that gender dysphoria heavily relies on the construction of an ideal gender representation of our birth sex that does not coincide with your own traits and our ideal representation of the opposite sex will often mirror your ideal version of ourselves. This is a temporary construct that will often change once we complete the process of transitioning and the dysphoria will hopefully goes away. We might logically know that your perception of gender is skewed, but our judgment will be clouded by gender dysphoria. Over time the gender dysphoria turns into body dysphoria as our inability to form a stable gender identity turns into a discomfort with our own body. This will eventually lead to a feeling of disassociation and a rejection of our body by our mind. On the hand, the closer that we come to acting like the ideal gender of our opposite sex, the more stable our opposite sex gender identity will become. I hope this makes some sort of sense to you and helps you understand yourself a tiny bit better or at the very least you find it interesting. I tend to change the meaning of terms to work them into my theories and I'm sure I did it here to some extent, so I apologize for that.
On further thought the explanation I gave of the relationship between gender dysphoria and ideal gender seems completely off. Skewed perception of ideal gender is most likely a manifestation of gender dysphoria and I'm fairly sure it is not the cause of gender dysphoria. That's what happens when you write an article style post in stream of conscious style of writing. :icon_redf
This is exactly what happened to me. I was told being trans was a sin, and I repressed everything. I do really love everything you've stated here. It is clear and concise. I identify as non-binary trans girl. This is confusing to some people, as female is a part of the binary. But having a more complex gender identity rooted in femininity, with many genderqueer traits, and slight masculine hints, is a clearer statement. I loved the 'ideal gender' aspect. It resonated and really hit home. Why does everything you write have to be so beautiful? :icon_bigg Much love, Aisling.
